1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tire information management system used for a mining site.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a mining site, a drilling machine analyzes mined crushed stone, and transmits, to a base station, results of the analysis on the crushed stone, and position information on the crushed stone. The base station makes a distribution map of the crushed stone based on the results of the analysis, and on the position information (refer to Japanese Patent Application publication No. 2000-204872). Using this distribution map makes it possible to load a truck with crushed stone containing a desired ingredient. As a result, more efficient transportation operations of the crushed stone are performed.
Incidentally, in the abovementioned mining site, a dump truck, which a power shovel loads with crushed stone, carries the crushed stone to, and unloads the crushed stone at, a proper destination for each kind of crushed stone with which the dump truck is loaded. Thereafter, the dump truck comes back to the mining site again, and joins the queue of the dump trucks waiting for loading at the tail, thereby repeating these “loading,” “transportation,” “unloading,” and “waiting” stages.
In such a mining site, a dump truck is loaded with crushed stone nearly amounting to a maximum loading capacity of the dump truck in order to transport crushed stone more efficiently. A large burden is placed on tires of the dump truck, whereby occurrence of a failure of the tire becomes more likely. For this reason, a transportation company managing dump trucks performs a detailed check (hereinafter, referred to as a tire check) on whether the internal pressure and the temperature of the tire are within allowable ranges.
However, the above tire check is not performed when the dump truck is traveling, but is performed only when the dump truck is not in operation. For this reason, in some cases, even if a failure occurs on the tire while the dump truck is traveling, the dump truck with the unrepaired tire returns to a mining site and waits for loading.
Consequently, a dump truck wearing a tire having a high possibility of failure occurrence (hereinafter, referred to as a high occurrence possibility tire wearing truck) causes a burst of the tire in the middle of transportation, and cannot transport crushed stone to the destination in some cases. On the other hand, a dump truck wearing a tire having a low possibility of failure occurrence (hereinafter, referred to as a low occurrence possibility tire wearing truck) can appropriately transport, to the destination, crushed stone nearly amounting to a maximum loading capacity of the dump truck. The existence of the high occurrence possibility tire wearing truck and a prolonged waiting time caused by the above existence hamper the low occurrence possibility tire wearing truck that tries to transport efficiently in a predetermined time period.
For this reason, development of a system capable of increasing transportation efficiency as a whole has been desired. The system operates in a manner that, while the high occurrence possibility tire wearing trucks are decreased in number in a mining site with compared to the conventional cases, the low occurrence possibility tire wearing trucks are increased in number.